This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

Is the arena "a month ahead of schedule"? Times stenography takes Ratner at face value

See link to other examples.
Would Barclays Center construction really be completed a month ahead of schedule? No, but that's what the New York Times clip file reads. (Yes, this is part of the Culture of Cheating.)

But Bruce C. Ratner, the developer who sold [Mikhail] Prokhorov 80 percent of the team and 45 percent of the arena, said that construction should be completed a month ahead of schedule, leading to a Sept. 28 opening with a Jay-Z concert.

I pointed out that, according to the transcript published by the Post, Ratner said that the construction should be completed a month before opening, not a month ahead of schedule:

"We’re opening on September 28, that’s the magic date. We’re going to open, as you all know, with a Jay-Z concert. We’ll probably be pretty substantially completed about a month earlier, and work out bugs for about a month. We’re on time and on schedule, and it should be done with no problem."

In other words, the arena is scheduled to be completed a month before it opens, giving it time to "work out bugs." Thus Ratner's statement to the Times thus sounded like posturing--or just colloquial shorthand, if he meant "a month before opening."

No one schedules an arena--a large, complex building with many systems--to be completed just before it opens. Ratner's own lieutenant, MaryAnne Gilmartin, said in affidavit that they needed three or four months to work out systems--a cushion that's unavailable.

Following up

After sending a reminder on April 20, I got a response from Times Senior Editor Greg Brock:

We did not write our article based on the transcript that The Post published. The sentence in our article was from a one-on-one interview our reporter had with Mr Ratner. And what we wrote accurately reflects what he told us. We are checking to see if he misspoke in our interview and wants to clarify or retract his statement. If he does, we will clarify that. But the statement in our article accurately reflects what he told us in our own interview. So at the moment there is nothing in our article to correct.

I responded by pointing to the work of construction consultant Merritt & Harris, which reports to Forest City Ratner, the Empire State Development Corporation, and the bank that's a trustee for the arena bondholders. The consultant said earlier in April that the arena is supposed to be substantially completed on September 5, so a month ahead of schedule would be August 5.

Brock responded:

Well we didn't interview the construction consultant. We interviewed Mr. Ratner. And we correctly reported what he told us. If we determine that the information he gave us needs correcting, we will do so. You can find it on A2, as always.

My response, and the reasons for skepticism

I responded by encouraging Brock to keep in mind that Ratner in 2008 said he anticipated finishing Atlantic Yards in 10 years, but in 2010 said that the ten-year timeline was "never supposed to be the time" in which the project would be built.

In other words, just because Ratner says something, precise stenography is only the starting point.

But Brock, in the manner of a lawyer for a New York state agency concerned less about the truth than surviving a legal challenge, just wants to establish a "rational basis" for the Times's report. And that "rational basis" is the quote from Ratner's own mouth.

But when Ratner contradicts himself the same day, when documentation contradicts him, and when he has a pattern of unreliability, "correctly reporting what he told us" is insufficient.

More reasons for skepticism

I could have offered another example: Ratner's claim that 2000 people would get work at the arena, even though the actual full-time equivalent is 1,240 jobs.

Or Ratner's admission in 2010 that the timetable for Atlantic Yards was market-dependent, though two years earlier he'd predicted a ten-year buildout.

Or Ratner's astonishing statement to the Wall Street Journal last November that "existing incentives" don't work for high-rise, union-built affordable housing.

After all, as Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane wrote 4/22/12, in another context (about coverage of President Obama):

Richard Stevenson, the political editor overseeing campaign coverage... added, “We remind ourselves every day of the need to provide readers — voters — with as much news, information and context as possible about the candidates, their records, their characters, their positions and the influences on them, including their campaign donors.”

If context is important, that means they wouldn't simply trust a self-serving quote, would they?

He was wrong, or misleading, or just speaking carelessly. My point is that simply quoting people precisely--Ratner, political candidates, etc.--when what they say is factually inaccurate is a disservice to readers.

This mistake is hardly the biggest problem with Atlantic Yards. But other journalists and researchers use the NY Times as a reference, so errors tend to creep into other reports.

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

The bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Community Update meeting June 14, held at 55 Hanson Place, addressed multiple issues, including delays in the project, a new detente with project neighbors,concerns about traffic congestion, upcoming sewer work and demolitions, and an explanation of how high winds caused debris to fly off the under-construction 38 Sixth Avenue building. I'll have more coverage.
Security issues came up several times at the meeting.
Wayne Bailey, a resident who regularly takes photos and videos (that I often use) of construction/operations issues that impact residents, asked representatives of Tishman Construction if the security guard at the sites they're building works for them.
After Tishman Senior VP Eric Reid said yes, Bailey asked why a guard told him not to shoot video of the site, even though he was on a public street.

"I will address it with principals for that security firm," Reid said.
Forest City Ratner executive Ashley Cotton, the …

This graphic, posted in November 2017, is post-dated to stay at the top of the blog. It will be updated as announced configurations change and buildings launch. Note the unbuilt B1 and the proposed shift in bulk to the unbuilt Site 5.

The August 2014 tentative configurations proposed by developer Greenland Forest City Partners will change. The project is already well behind that tentative timetable.

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …